Posts Tagged ‘braided updo’

It feels like every time you walk down the hair aisle at your favorite store, there’s something epic and new, doesn’t it? As a stylist, I think that’s cool, as I’m very into mixing hair and technology. Hair products are always evolving and styling products in particular are constantly one-upping themselves. Never in a million did I think I’d see the day when alcohol-free aerosol hairspray would be a thing. Last month, Pantene introduced just that. It’s called AIRSPRAYand it’s the first alcohol-free aerosol styling product on the market. Needless to say we had to try it to see what it could actually do. We did our own kind of experiment– three-styles-in-two-days kind of experiment. Here’s how that went down…

First things first, we gave it the undone wave test. This hair was airdried without product, and then we did some loose waves using a 1 1/4″ barrel, then sprayed with THIS HAIRSPRAY. We scrunched it in and loosely broke up the waves using just our fingers, no brush.

As you can clearly see, separation was good and waves became a bit fuller. The hair didn’t feel product-y at all, but did take a teeny bit longer to evaporate (obvs because there’s no alcohol) but we were down to wait.

Happy to report that after spraying one light veil all over, the hair was still soft to the touch.

Our next mane move happens that same day. Sunday evening dinner with girlfranz. The cool thing about AIRSPRAY is that you can layer it without the hair starting to feel “crunchy” or dry.

We created a single cornrow down the center of the hair. Once you get to the nape of the neck, tie it off with a clear elastic. (Grab a friend who can braid if you can’t do this part yourself.)

Next, join the sides together in a low ponytail and bind it all together using another elastic. Your waves may or may not need another light layer of spray! We did! Still touchable and soft, btw.

Use your tail comb to smooth down any flyaway hairs around your face.

Here’s how this looks from the front. I know you want to know! I was very curious about how it would look from the front when we started this. You can hardly see anything which is rad because when you turn around it’s like OH HAIIIII!

Okay, now let’s say you have a really long night for one reason or another, ya know? And let’s say Monday morning you have to pull yourself together for work kind of early. Good news is, you can still keep working with this look and you don’t have to wash your hair. YAAAAAY!

Take the outside rubberband out but not the second one. Keep the braid in place.

Take a smoothing brush, spray a little more of that AIRSPRAY goodness on the brush. Now smooth the hair back into a sleek low pony and secure it with an elastic.

Add a light mist of spray on to the ponytail and twist.

Coil that sleek pony into a bun and secure. Once you’ve done that, you can smooth out any fly-aways using a little more spray.

It’s pretty cool that you can keep on keepin’ on with an alcohol-free AIRSPRAY without the fear of major dryness. If you end up trying it or if you already have, tell us what you think! Were you able to layer it? Brush it? Re-style with it? You can also review it on Pantene.com.

Hope you guys enjoyed this tutorial. Which of these 3 looks is your favorite? Considering it’s Valentine’s (0r) Gal-entine’s Day weekend, this could come in extra handy if you have to work on Monday morning, AMIRIGHT?

So now that you have that gorgeous bob, what do you do with it other than wear it down? We’ve given you a couple of ideas with tutorials in the past like THIS and THIS, and we thought we would throw in another since wedding season is pretty much staring us in the face. This one is intended to be a bit messier and a little “undone” from the back so keep that in mind when you get started. You hair doesn’t need to be smooth and perfect before you start, in fact, it’s probably more helpful to have a little natural texture or to put some in really quick with a curling iron before starting. Today I’ve enlisted my friend “Allie from the Internet” as I like to call her, Allie Evansto show us how it’s done. Here we go!

First thing you’ll need to do is a halo braid. Create a side part. Do an inside-out or dutch french braid around the top of the head. I like to start at the hairline on the side with less hair and take it back to the crown.

Now you’ll bring it all the way back around to the front. Stay close to the head with your hands as you braid so you don’t get pieces that sag.

Braid the tail all the way down and then tuck it in to the braid over where you started.

Fatten up your braid with TEXTURE POWDER as we’ve done in the past. If you don’t have any, you can find it right HERE. Once you sprinkle on some powder, gently pull the braid apart to fatten it up.

Work it in well. We used about 3 dime sized dabs here. This will really help your short pieces stay put.

Twist your pieces and pin them with a STRONG HOLDING BOBBY PIN. Weak pins will not be ideal for this look. You need some serious strength when trying to hold up short hair.

Once we finished securing the pieces, we kept adding more bobby pins in the back because it just looks rad. Pick a contrasting color to your hair color. Allie obviously has platinum hair so we went with black pins. But if your hair is dark or red go with white pins, or even a pop of color like THESE. Just let them show. Don’t try to hide every pin!

When it comes to short hair, keeping those little hairs up can be a challenge, so also feel free to add a little STRONG HOLDING HAIRSPRAYat the end. Use enough bobby pins to make it clear that you want them to show. You don’t want just a couple to show or it may look more haphazard than cool. Good luck!

Lately we’ve been getting a lot of workout hair questions. So let’s do a little series of workout hair ideas, shall we? This one is pretty simple but quite effective. If you go to spinning, dancing or kickboxing, there is a ton of motion. With classes like pilates, yoga and barre, you probably do a lot of posing and don’t want to break your concentration to gather all your hair back up into another bun when it falls out. Luckily, this hair will do the trick for both types of workout whether you’re gonna shake, shake, shake or not. Here’s how we did this cute braid bun combo…

Start with your hair in two dutch braids. If you don’t know what a dutch braid is, it’s just like a regular french braid but it’s inside out. In other words, if you’re crossing over when you french braid, then you would cross under when you dutch braid. Tie these two off at the bottom using a small clear elastic.

Cross the braids over each other near back hairline.

Now wrap them around each other all the way down. Tie that off with another clear elastic. You can leave it at this point (because it looks pretty cool already) or you can do step 4.

Use THESE MATTE BOBBYPINS to secure the bun. These come in a half shiny, half matte pin combo packs. (I stumbled on this trick by accident! I had these bobbypins in my office sitting on my desk to be photographed and used the black ones to put my hair up in a bun. The bun literally did not move at all for the whole day and I’ve been using these ever since.)

Hope this is helpful to some of you to keep the hair off your neck/shoulders. Do you like this workout hair series? Do you want to see more? Any specific requests?

As we mentioned a few hair posts ago, we’ll be cranking out some short/medium bob-length hairstyles. This is one of my favorites if you’re wearing something with a collar and you want to “lift” the hair up off your neck. You can definitely wear it regardless of the neckline on your dress/top but if pulling your hair up is the focus, keep this trick in your back pocket! I’ve broken it down into 3 sections to try and make it less complicated.

PART 1: Rough it up a little.

In these first four steps, you’re just adding some texture so the hair isn’t too soft. When short hair is super soft, the bobby pins will slip and the updo will slowly (or worse– quickly) fall apart. Here’s how we do that…

Start with clean dry hair. If you have a little wave in your natural texture, let it be. It’s useful for this updo. If your hair is naturally pin-straight, you may want to add a little quick wave with a curling iron, wand or flat iron. If you hair is curly, leave it! This can totally be done on curly hair.

Spray a bit of beach spray or texture spray all over, focusing on the root area. Make sure it’s not a product that feels too “crunchy” or sticky! You don’t want to have trouble pulling it apart as you put it up. It should be soft to the touch. Here we used THIS ONE from L’oreal, which worked really well and still felt soft.

Use your fingers to build the hair up. Scrunch and massage the root until the spray dries.

Twist some of the pieces to give it even a little more texture.

PART 2: Twist it up!

Create a diagonal part. It’s good to do this so you get a slightly more even distribution of hair on each side.

Section off the heavier side and clip it forward to save it for the “knot” portion.

Now you’re going to start twisting the side with less hair. Start near the ear and work your way back and up!

Keep twisting! Add some pins as you go to secure the twist.

Once you’ve twisted it all you can twist, you’re going to need to tuck the ends.

Loop it back around as you see in photo 6 and tuck the tail of your twist back into the lower part of the twist and pin.

You’re probably always going to have some short hairs fall out of the back when putting up bob-length hair. For that I always keep some of THIS around. It’s like liquid glue (not in a bad way). It’s just a really strong and will secure those hairs that fall out, no problem.

PART 3: Knotty, knotty!

Now let’s go back to the front section. Pretend you’re going to do a french braid along your hairline. Instead of taking 3 pieces, take just two. Tie them together once.

Now add a piece to each side, the same way you would with a french braid.

Now tie that together!

Keep going and adding hair to each section as you go.

Once you get just above the ear, you can stop.

Twist the ends and tuck it into the back twist. Secure it with a bobby pin and spray it with a light veil of hairspray.

Check it in the mirror from all sides. Loosen up some bits if you want to make it feel a bit more soft and natural. If you try it, we of course want to see it! Tag us in your photo @thebeautydept on Instagram!